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Middle Result William Bowers 394 (9.7%) Paul Craine 1090 (26.9%) Howard Quayle 1205 (29.8%) Bill Shimmins 1357 (33.5%) It wasn’t to be… A huge thank you to the 1,090 residents of Middle who gave me one of their votes today! I’m hugely humbled by that support. An enormous thank you to my fantastic s…

Just one week to go until the election. I have visited almost 2,000 houses now and enjoyed some very interesting conversations (and challenges) in West and East Baldwin yesterday. I hope to visit the remaining houses during the next week. The first of Middle’s two ‘requisition meetings’ was held in…

Two weeks to go until the House of Keys election. My Manifesto came back from the printers yesterday and is now in the post. In June this year Lord Lisvane produced his independent ‘Review of the Functioning of Tynwald’. The report drew on his first-hand experience of more than fifty parliaments ar…

Three weeks to go before the election. I have visited around 1,400 houses over the past 7 weeks. Perhaps 40% of those houses had no-one at home – but that still leaves an enormous number of houses where I have enjoyed hearing the views of the residents of Braddan, Santon and Marown. It is a huge pr…

Less than 4 weeks to the election. At a Chamber of Commerce briefing last week, House of Keys candidates were told of the Chamber’s wish to see the Island’s population grow to 100,000 by 2026. This would amount to a growth of 15,000 residents (nearly 18%) in ten years. This is much more ambitious t…

‘You have a responsibility to pay your taxes’ (Theresa May, July 2016) Five weeks to go until the election. The commitment to tackling (aggressive) tax avoidance has been in the UK news again this week. The UK Treasury is proposing very tough fines for accountants and advisers who help people bend…

There was another meeting that I had at the start of this week. A meeting that left me with more than a degree of concern. I went to visit a farm in Middle being run by a tenant farmer – actually a young man that I used to teach some years ago (it is always a great delight to meet former pupils). W…

Six weeks to go until the election. At the start of the week, I met with Eddie Teare, the outgoing Treasury Minister. I took up his offer to provide a briefing for candidates and apparently I was one of only half a dozen to do so. It was good to hear about growth in reserves, growth in the workforc…

Seven weeks to go until the House of Keys election. I have so far visited around one third of the homes in Middle. I have enjoyed meeting many great people keen to talk about their experiences living in the Isle of Man. The Isle of Man Social Attitudes Survey 2016 has indicated that: ‘A third of us…